MacBinary II+

• Version: v1.0.1
• Author: Peter Lewis
• Requirements: System 7
• Cost: free
• Pros: very simply encodes or decodes MacBinary files
• Cons: none
• Remote location: <URL:http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive/Archive/cmp/mac-binary-ii-plus-101.hqx>
• Tricks location: <URL:http://152.1.24.177/teaching/archives/mac-binary-ii-plus-101.hqx>

This handy utility translates files saved in a binary format into a format usable on Macintosh computers. As you may or may not know, Macintosh files can be divided into two parts: the data fork and the resource fork. The data fork is usually text and the resource fork is usually programming code. These "forks" loose their identity on computers not supporting these formats (non-Macintosh computers). Also, resource forks are not sent by the Macintosh-based WWW servers. MacBinary is an application "melding" the the data and resource forks together making them savable and servable on such computers. This translation process is more efficient than BinHexing a document since the resulting file sizes are smaller, but since BinHex'ed documents are ASCII text files they can be sent through email. Documents encoded with the MacBinary can not be sent through email.

In any event, you may want the MacBinary utility to decode (or encode) any documents you may receive through the WWW that have the extension .bin. On the other hand, StuffIt Expander can take care of MacBinary files as well.

MIME type: application/x-macbinary
Filename extensions: .bin

Eric last edited this page on September 26, 1995. Please feel free to send comments.